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PALISSY

1412

at other times the letters were scraped away with a sharp blade. Nearly all ancient manuscripts, however, were written with an ink which could not be entirely removed, and traces of a former writing could be seen beneath the new copy. In modern times there have been various efforts to restore these ancient writings by some chemical treatment. In this way have been found copies of the Republic of Cicero, the Institutes of Gaius, a part of the Epistle to the Romans and other parts of the Old and New Testaments. The Republic of Cicero was covered by a commentary on the Psalms, written by St. Augustine. Palissy (pa'le'se'), Bernard, the great French potter, was born near Agen in 1509, and wandered as a glass and portrait

Eainter until he married and settled in aintes in 1538. While working here as a surveyor, his attention was attracted by an enameled cup, and he determined to discover the process. After 16 years of continuous labor and experiment, in which he used all his resources and burned the tables and floors for fuel, he succeeded, and, though imprisoned in 1562 as a Huguenot, he was released by royal edict and appointed "inventor of figurines" to the king. He removed to Paris in 1564, and, through the aid of Catherine dei Medici, was saved from the massacre of St. Bartholomew. From 1575 to 1584 he gave a course ot lectures on physics and natural history, demonstrating the origin of springs, the formation of fossil shells and the best method of purifying water. In 1585, however, he was again arrested as a Huguenot and imprisoned in the Bastille, where he died in 1589. See H. Morley's Palissy the Potter. Pal'las. See MINERVA. Palm, species of the great tropical family Palmacece. Palms are the tree monocotyledons, and there are more than 1,000 species. The palmetto of the Gulf States is a diminutive representative of the group. The body consists of a tall, unbranched, columnar trunk bearing at its summit a crown of immense leaves, which are pinnately or palmately veined and often splitting so as to appear lobed or Compound. The sflower clusters 'arise from the leafy crown and usually ar* very

PALMYRA PALM

large and pendent. Aside from their ornamental purposes, palms are very useful. Notable among the useful forms are the date palm with its pulpy fruit, the cocoa-nut palm with its huge seeds *ull of edible endosperm, the sago palm whose pith yields the starchy sago and the ivory palm whose hard endosperm is the vegetable ivory. Palm honey, palm-wine and palm-oil are also well-known products. The leaves and stems of many of the species are used for making hats, baskets, fans About 60 species of hardy palms are grown in California. Of our few native palms the most common is the palmetto. Palms vary in height from three to 100 feet. The palm of history and of the Bible is the date-palm, while the most prized ornamental species is the royal palm.

Pal'ma, Tomas Estrado, the first president of Cuba, was born in Bayama, Santiago de Cuba, June 9th, 1835. The son of a wealthy planter, he was educated at Havana and subsequently studied law at the University of Seville in Spain. Upon the outbreak of the Ten Years' War (1868-78) in Cuba he joined the insurgents and soon rose to the rank of general. Under the provisional Cuban government he was successively elected to the assembly, made secretary of state, and elected president. Soon after, he was captured by the Spaniards and taken prisoner to Spain, and his estates in Cuba were confiscated. Having regained his liberty, he settled in Honduras. A little later he removed to New York and opened a school for Cuban-American boys at Central Valley in Orange County. In 1895 the Cubans again rebelled and in July of the same year he was elected president of the associated Cuban clubs in the United States. After the Spanish-American War which liberated Cuba, Palma was elected the first president of the new Cuban Republic (Oct., 1901). He was inaugurated on May 2oth, 1902, and on the same day the United States relinquished all claim to jurisdiction over the internal affairs of the new nation. In 1906 another insurrection broke out, due primarily to the very feneral belief that the voice of the people ad been stifled at the polls in 1905 and that by means of pressure and intimidation President Palma had brought about his re-election. This led to the United States' interference in behalf of peace. Palma being unwilling to meet the conditions imposed and the investigation that was to follow, on September 28th, 1906, tendered his resignation and retired to his old home town of Bayama. On the following day the United States secretary of war by the authority of President Roosevelt proclaimed himself provisional governor of Cuba. He died, Nov. 4, 1908. See CUBA.

Palm'er,   Alice    Freeman,    an    active educator and social reformer, was born at